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Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you
should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

“Prison Architect is currently in Alpha, which means we haven't finished it yet - it's full of bugs and glitches and you're not going to get a polished experience if you buy it at the moment. What you will get is early access to a bullfrog-style Prison Management Sim that over 250,000 gamers have already thought is worth a look at.

When you buy early access we also guarantee to give you a free copy of the full game once we've finished and you'll also get monthly updates which include new features and bug fixes. But that's not all, you can also pre-order a copy of the PA art book and Soundtrack (like the game, these aren't ready yet, but you'll be the first to get access when they are launched), or buy a pack that includes the whole Introversion back catalogue (we've made some seriously awesome games). Finally, you can immortalise yourself into the game, by naming a prisoner and writing his bio. Everyone that plays PA will see your bio and know that YOU helped to make Prison Architect a reality.

But that's not all, we also want to get your feedback and comments on the game and want you to help us to direct the development process. Tell us what you like and what you don't like and what you want us to work on. We've got a great community of Prison Architect early adopters and we'd love for you to join in - just head over to http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/developer/register.html once you've bought the alpha.”

July 30

- Gang Leaders
Sometimes a Legendary prisoner who arrives through Intake will also be a gang leader.
They will immediately assume control of their gang, and will establish a leadership hierarchy.
Can promote gang members into Lieutenants, up to a maximum of 1 lieutenant per 10 soldiers.
Can recruit non gang members into the gang. (Must visit the prisoner first)

Gang members are fiercly loyal to their leaders:
- They will become angry (temperature increase) if their leader is being punished in Solitary or Lockdown
- If a gang leader is killed, the entire gang will immediately try to start a riot

- Gang Territory Capture
Gangs will attempt to take control of key areas of your prison.
The attempt is called a 'Play', and is led by a Lieutenant.
He will gather a group of gang members together and give them instructions.
The soldiers will then proceed to the zone in question, and assert their authority over that zone.
If they are unchallenged, the territory will turn their colour and they will have ownership of it.
The player cannot build or change room setups within gang territory

- Captured Territory
Once captured, territory shows up in the Gangs view as the colour of the gang who has claimed it
Rival gang members are not permitted into the territory
Non gang members can enter the territory and use the facilities (eg Phones), but must pay Protection Money to the gang
Gangs accumulate money from non gang members this way, and will use the money to buy equipment such as stolen weapons
From time to time a lieutenant will arrange a 'Play' to revisit the territory with a group of soldiers, as a show of force.

- Contested Territories
Sometimes a gang will be strong enough to take a territory from a rival gang.
They will only attempt this if they have sufficient numerical advantage.
A lieutenant will arrange a Play and will send enough soldiers to take the territory by force.

- Eviction
Once a gang has claimed a territory, they must be Evicted to remove their influence.
Click on the EVICT button in the gang view to begin this process.
Any gang members within the territory will immediately turn hostile.
Nearby gang lietenants will arrange new 'Plays' in an attempt to re-capture their territory from your guards.
Once you have defended the territory for 24 hours, the ownership reverts to 'Unclaimed'.

- Securing a territory
With enough guards, you can protect a territory against any gang control.
Nb this can only be done with an unclaimed territory - any gangs must be evicted first.

- Security Rooms
Security rooms also count as territory, and are automatically guard controlled.
Guards can project their power from security rooms to any neighbouring territory.
Eg a security room with 10 guards inside will 'project' 10 guards onto all neighbouring yards, common rooms etc.
Nb. 'Neighbouring' means there must be a door between the security room and the yard/common room.

= Contraband trading
All prisoners can now trade their stolen contraband with other prisoners for money.
Prisoners will sell items they don't particularly want, and use that money at the shop or to buy other items from other prisoners.
The price of any item is based on the supply and demand of that item within the prison.
The approximate trade prices of all items can now be seen in the Intelligence / Dangers view.

- Ranged Weapon accuracy
All ranged weapons have had their accuracy nerfed (previously 100% for anyone).
Tazers: 60% accuracy
Tazers used by Armed guards: 70% accuracy
All other ranged weapons: 70% accuracy
All other ranged weapons used by Armed guards: 90%

- The following rooms now all require Prison Labour to be unlocked:
Shop
Library
Mail Room

- Additional Contraband can now be stolen from the following rooms:
- Forestry : Saw / Axe / Spade

June 30

= Gangs
Some prisoners will now have gang allegiences upon entering your prison.
This can make those prisoners much harder to deal with, as they will work to defend each other during trouble.

This is an optional feature, enabled by ticking the new "Gangs" tickbox in the New Map screen.
(Nb. You can also hack gangs into an existing prison by adding 'EnabledGangs true' to the top of the .prison file)

More dangerous / higher security prisoners are more likely to be gang members.

- Gang members can be identified visually by their full body tattoos
- Gang members will always come to the aid of their fellow gang member when fights break out.
This includes coming to the aid of a fellow gang member involved in a fight with guards.

- Gang members more likely to try to steal weapons, and more likely to carry them rather than stash them
- Gang members will not participate in any voluntary reform programs
- Gang members will not work for the prison

- New view : Intelligence => Gangs. Highlights all known gang members and shows the total number of members of each gang.

Nb. This is part 1 of a larger feature.

= New room: Shop
- Requires shelves and a shop front. The shop front should go on a wall such that prisoners can acces the shop front from a corridoor.

- Shop goods will be brought into the prison in the usual way, and taken to the shop.
- Prisoners can work in the shop, and will unpack the boxes of goods onto the shelves.
- Prisoners can buy items from the shop to help with their needs:
- Soap, shampoo etc for Hygene
- Towels, blankets etc for Comfort
- Magazines for entertainment
- Snacks for Hunger

- All prisoners are now paid a fixed wage of 50 cents per hour when working for the prison
- Items in the shop cost $5 each
- Prisoner wages and shop takings are now shown in the daily cashflow report (updated at midnight)

- Prisoners are more inclined to participate in voluntary training programs, and will concentrate harder,
when there is a shop on site. (They want to earn that wage to buy things for themselves).

- The shop is a potential source of smuggled contraband

= Asian language support
The game now supports asian character sets, paving the way for translations into
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
etc

- Mail room (continued)
- Fixed: Mail satchels would be endlessly delivered in certain circumstances
- You can now dump mail satchels if you end up with too many

- Escape tunnels (continued):
- Each member of a dig team now brings diminishing returns to the overall speed of digging.
This represents the fact that (say) 10 prisoners just couldn't dig all at once in one square.
Previously 4 prisoners would dig four times faster than just 1 prisoner.
it will now take 4 prisoners to dig twice as fast as just 1 prisoner
It will take 11 prisoners to dig three times as fast as just 1 prisoner

- Searching a toilet manually will now reveal any escape tunnels.
Nb this requires you specifically search the toilet itself, and does not apply if the toilet is searched
as part of a "search cell" or "search cell block" order

- Conventional fences no longer slow diggers down

- The research screen now flashes a warning if you are attempting to research an item,
but are missing the neccesary Administrator, or he does not have an office

Reviews

“Prison Architect chills me to the bone. If played haphazardly it can be a wonderful farce rich with hilarious anecdotes, but played patiently and carefully it’s a horror game, a top-down voyage into the heart of darkness, an eternal raging fire I forever try but can only fail to douse.”
RPS

Steam Workshop

About This Game

Build and Manage A Maximum Security Prison.

Prison Architect is the world's latest Prison Management Sim. Starting with an empty plot of land you must construct a holding cell with basic water and electricity to house your first batch of prisoners, to buy you enough time to create a proper cell block. You'll need to hire some guards, get some showers built and unless the kitchen is up and running with chefs working away you're going to end up with a riot on your hands. From there you take your prison in which-ever direction you like. A monsterous super-max or comfortable center for rehabilitation, the choice is up to you.

Prison Architect is currently in Alpha which means that the game is playable, but still in development. Not all features are implemented yet and there are many bugs that may affect gameplay. We are currently releasing monthly updated builds which include new features and bug fixes. By buying the alpha you will automatically be gifted a free copy of the full game when it's finished.

-Built a beautiful prison-Received a freakin legendary prisonner-Built a mini prison only for him-Hired 3 armed guards, 3 guards, and 3 dog handlers to watch over him day and night-He stole a lighter which was brought to him by someone who threw it over the perimeter wall 3KM far from his cell-Burnt his cell down-Stole a shotgun and killed each of my guards-Paused the game and made 10 normal guards spawn in front of him-He shot his way through them-Received 15 times 24H of lockdown for his crimes when I finally managed to handcuff him-Starved to death because I had no way to remove his sentence

Way better than it appears on the surface. I was pre-disposed with the graphics making the prisoners look less realistic than LEGO toys, but once you start to play, it becomes a non-issue. Designing a prison which almost runs itself is very satisfying, especially when trouble happens but your design means even minor issues are handled automatically. Sometimes big troubles may come and the most interesting part of this game is trying to find a solution to these troubles. You may finally have to re-design the whole area to find a reasonable solution. The weakness of this game is also very obvious. Some small bugs may be annoying but the biggest problem is the game becomes repeptitive after you'd setup a prison with all the features after a few days, which is also a common problem in most simulation games. A lucky thing is this game is still in the Alpha test. So users will get free updates including new features automatically, which could have become a paid DLC separated from the original game after the complete version is released just like what most fcvking EA games do.

-Started a massive fire and killed 1000+ people-Made a massive traffic jam because of all the hearses coming in to collect all of the corpses-Built a new prison opposite to the old one-Doctors kept killing themselves by trying to rescue people in the old prison-Workers kept leaving projects half-finished because it's "Too Dangerous"-Workers blocked everyone's path because they kept leaving stacks of concrete everywhere-Another traffic jam started because no one dumped the garbage-Didn't receive any more prisoners because of all the garbage trucks blocking the prison trucks-Prisoners started starving to death and rioting because the cooks won't cook-Sent 50 armed guards to try and deal with the riot but were blocked by all of the stacks of concrete-Burnt down new prison-Acquired 1000 more corpses-Made a giant morgue for all the corpses-Set the morgue on fire

I whole heartedly recommend this game. At the time of review I have 210 hrs of game time in. Far behind in my library at #2 is Kerbal Space Program with 105. This game is perfectly paced, completely open to infinite designs and has so much depth I can easily see hitting 500hrs. After the latest update (alpha 31) this game is packed with content and the workshop offers massive expansion and awesome mods (Imperial architect being my current fav. Star wars prison!).

Pros:As big as you wanna be! Want to make a small 25 person prison that runs efficiently and makes money with minimum security bluecollar criminals? Go ahead! Want to make a 500 person Max security only iron curtain that can hold and control intensely volatile and psychotic madmen? Sure can!

Well designed! The UI and indicators for things like prison heat, tech tree, controlling and managing intake and regime of the inmates and hiring and firing staff, as well as prison programs is easy to understand and impliment. I've played plenty of games that after opening them up and fiddling with for 20 minutes I can hardly make heads or tails of the UI or it has infinitely frusturating menus to navigate or item info to memorize. Not so with PA.

Entertaining! Set up phone taps and learn a prisoner has set up a time for someone to throw booze over the wall into the garbage area? Watch them toddle over into the area and as they head back inside stop them and counter their contraband! Initiate shakedowns to find inmates who have dummys in their beds and are digging tunnels! The excitement of unearthing a tunnel they have been digging for days that NEARLY reached the outside but was thwarted is always satisfying. Recruit confidential informants to reveal persons who have knives, needles, poison SHOTGUNS in their cells. Use sniffer dogs to inspect incoming food and items to ensure they are poison and piano wire free. The combinations and implications are endless.

No two prisons are ever the same! One prison may be full of raging alcoholics, another may be a mix of volatile angry inmates and ex law enforcment or snitches that must be contained and seperated or death ensues! My last prison had 3 legendary prisoners, each capable of disarming and killing guards in a single punch. Not only must you constantly learn to streamline your prison and improve every aspect of the design you also have to adapt and keep tabs on your current and incoming prisoners, keeping the troublemakers at bay and keeping your staff running smoothly.

Cons:

Still early access. This isnt necessarily a con but something to be take into consideration. This game has all the content and playability and optimization of a full release but as new features ar implimented new bugs invariably creep up. In the most recent patch my cooks tend to randomly pile dirty trays in the cells of my supermax and solitary prisoners. Later in the day they pick them up and wash them. On occasion I will assign a block to eat in a specific canteen, and then assign a specific kitchen to feed them. Later on suddenly I will check my prisoners needs and some are starving. I will check my food distribution screen and randomly the kitchen and canteen to cellblock link is totally gone. Its not perfect, but none of these bugs or issues are anywhere near game breaking and are fairly smalltime.

In conclusion get this game. The developers are awesome, the game is amazing, and its not even complete yet! I look forward to future updates and features and the workshop community is actively making new mods regularily that add even more to the experience. 98/100